Australian Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien has accused Labor of playing “partisan politics” over relationships in the Pacific and its leader Pauline Hanson of holding a gun to their heads over development aid after he returned from a trip to Australia’s key regional partners Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
“Labor has misused the relationships in the Pacific to play partisan politics,” he told ABC TV’s Insiders program on Sunday. “I don’t believe in that.
“We need to demonstrate as much bipartisanship as we can. We need to be Team Australia, especially when it comes to our closest neighbours in the Pacific.
“I didn’t politicise Labor’s very poor performance on climate change. Let’s not forget emissions are actually higher now than they were under the Coalition. I didn’t talk like that when I was in the Pacific.
“We shouldn’t actually have political fights in the Pacific, and that’s a key criticism I have of the Albanese government,” he said.
O’Brien highlighted the maritime drug highway coming through the Pacific Islands and feeding the lucrative Australian and New Zealand markets for cocaine and methamphetamine, which was a number one concern for Pacific governments.
Asked about comments by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who suggested Australia should not give aid to Pacific countries that are also taking financial assistance from China, O’Brien said he disagreed with her position.
“On one hand, I think she’s identifying a legitimate point in that we don’t want to see any nation overly strategically dependent or overly financially indebted to any country, and we don’t see any nation in our own region in that position to that extent. I think it’s a fair point,” he said.
“But I completely disagree with Senator Hanson’s stance and solution. I mean, the idea that you effectively hold a gun to the head of our Pacific neighbours – that’s not what a friend does.
“That’s not a way of building trust. You don’t basically create an ultimatum, and you certainly don’t say it’s all about who you’re going to get money from.
“The relationship that we have with the Pacific Islands is far deeper than development money, and if you were to narrow the debate to just that, well, you’ve got to be careful who you want to go into a bidding war with.
“You go into a bidding war with someone with deeper pockets; well, you’re going to lose that,” he said.
